A police standoff with a man barricaded in an Oakland home with a 3-year-old girl ended about 7 a.m. Monday with no injuries reported, police said. The incident began about 2 a.m. on the 2900 block of Capp Street, Oakland police spokeswoman Officer Johnna Watson said.

Oakland police want to make the public aware of a recent series of armed robberies of victims who have been lured to Oakland to respond to Craiglist ads for a car for sale. Officer Johnna Watson said the victims are out-of-town buyers who aren’t familiar with Oakland. She said the ads usually say the car is for sale in another city but before the final sale of the car the seller changes the location of the deal to Oakland.

People following Venezuela’s news website Noticias24 Tuesday were treated to a plot that might have been lifted from one of the popular Venezuelan soap operas featuring Eliana Lopez….

“This is a case of political persecution, and we Venezuelans know what that is,” said Lopez, who denied that her husband had abused her. “Everybody believes that politics in the United States is very transparent. But it’s actually a bit cloudy.”

When more drugs and dealing in the parking lot began showing up at Granada High School in Livermore six years ago, student resource officer Dan Cabral called in the dogs….On Tuesday, Pleasanton school district trustees could join a small number of Bay Area school districts — including Livermore, Dublin and Castro Valley — that use drug-sniffing dogs for random searches of the parking lots and physical education locker rooms when students are not present.

Job applicants sought – but only if they don’t need work. The message in some job advertisements these days is pretty blunt: Don’t bother sending a résumé if you’re not bringing home a paycheck already….

New Jersey has passed a law banning such advertisements, federal legislation is pending, and a newly proposed California bill, Assembly Bill 1450, would prohibit discriminating against the jobless in hiring.

The pilot of a crop-dusting plane most likely did not see a meteorological tower before he crashed into it and died in Contra Costa County last year, and there may be nothing to prevent similar fatalities in the future, federal investigators have concluded Stephen Allen, 58, of Courtland (Sacramento County) died after his S-2R Thrush Commander crashed into the 197-foot tower on Webb Tract Island the morning of Jan. 10, 2011. The island is in the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta northeast of the Antioch Bridge.

One was arrested during a largely peaceful anti-police march through downtown Oakland Saturday night, police said. Oakland police said around 60 people gathered in Frank Ogawa Plaza at 8 p.m. for a march that circled through downtown Oakland between 9 and 11:30 p.m. One protester was arrested when the demonstrator blocked the roadway with garbage, police said.